The person that wrote the headline may have considered it a “stumble” but I think he said what he said in order to turn the tables on the reporter.
The democrat candidate responds in the expected fashion. Universal background checks are fine with him. He doesn’t need an AR-15 to hunt pheasant, etc...
No matter how you or I may construe the incident, it is looking in the rearview mirror. There is what happened and your or my interpretation thereof, both of which are 100% meaningless, and then there is what I call the “residue” of the incident.
The residue of the incident is “Sasse stumbles”. That exact word conjunction. No more than 5% of readers will read beyond that headline, no more than .5% would go to C-SPAN and review what actually happened and try to make their own interpretation of it; but of those .5%, absolutely 100% of them are already Sasse voters so there is simply no functionality there.
The fact of the matter is that the mental impression made upon 95% of those who read that headline, whether they read further, use the paper for fishwrap or lighting a fire or swatting a fly, is done. “Sasse stumbles”.
That headline in the Nebraska Whatever Herald today, tomorrow makes the impression it makes. And now, on op-ed day, some dedicated liberal will write in some goofball bumper-sticker based letter and amplify or reinvigorate the misimpression in some dipwad way but IT FUNCTIONS AS IT FUNCTIONS.
And that is why stumbly-bumbly Republican candidates, some of them conservatives, but all of them untrained in media handling and apparently unaware that the media would love nothing more than the opportunity to destroy them (which gives even their supporters the impression that the candidate is unprepared) get picked off one by one using their own words against them. And fine and good people are systematically assassinated this way. It’s a sickening waste and that it happens over and over is my evidence that Republicans in general either do not give a crap about winning or are too stupid to see the same trap being sprung on them.
Sasse is a newbie, this I understand, but what better way is there to negate the appeal of a newbie than to portray them as unprepared?